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After a contentious Sunday session, Tunisia's National Constituent Assembly (NCA) today resumed article by article voting on the new constitution.
The assembly has been tasked with approving the entire 146-article document by January 13.
Monday's plenary session was supposed to be scheduled for the selection of the membership of the board of elections. However, the NCA committee tasked with submitting a final list of nominees to an NCA plenary session has not reached consensus, deputy Karima Souid tweeted.
The NCA started the vote on the Rights and Liberties Chapter of the constitution by adopting nine articles during today's morning session.
Among these are Article 21, which states that "life is sacred." This article, however, maintains the legality of the the death penalty in "extreme cases regulated by law." Proposed amendments to abolish this punishment were rejected.
Though the death penalty has always existed in Tunisian law, the last execution dates back to 1991.
Other articles approved today ban torture (Article 22), guarantee the right to privacy and personal data protection (Article 23), and the right to a fair trial (Article 26).
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Deputy Nadia Chaabbene from Almasar party called out for the cancellation of capital punishment. Chaabane said that death penalty was used in the Bourguiba era to exterminate individuals for their political convictions. Tunisia's 1959 constitution allows the judiciary body to use capital punishment as a sentence.
Statistically-speaking, 137 were executed between 1956 and 1987, 129 of them for political reasons.
Death penalty history in Tunisia
Death penalty was last used in 1991. In the same year, a man was sentenced to death penalty for charges of raping 14 children. It has been argued that the Tunisian judiciary body has commuted the use of capital punishment using long imprisonment sentences in lieu of the death penalty. According to estimates made by Human Rights Watch, there were around 40 prisoners sentenced to death in Tunisia as of February 2011. The estimations are based on an interview with an official from the Ministry of Justice.
Source: Tunis Times, January 6, 2014

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